NATION DATELINES

Published 4:00 am, Monday, April 17, 1995

AH: U.S. has yawning gap between rich, poor New York Economic differences in the United States are more pronounced than in any other industrialized nation, according to a published report.

Citing economic and statistical research yet to be published, the New York Times reported Monday that in 1989, the wealthiest 1 percent of American households - with assets worth $2.3 million each - owned "nearly 40 percent of the nation's wealth."

The top 20 percent of households, with assets of $180,000 or more, owned 80 percent of America's wealth, the newspaper said. On the other end of the scale, the studies showed the lowest-earning 20 percent of households earn 5.7 percent of America's after-tax income.

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Possible explanations for the increasing U.S. disparities in income include falling wages for unskilled workers due to automation, low tax rates on the rich during the 1980s and the decline of trade unions.

5 guards injured

in prison riot Columbia, S.C. Five guards were stabbed Monday at a state prison and inmates held three people hostage in a cafeteria after a fight broke out.

Four of the injured guards were hospitalized in serious condition and the fifth was treated and released, said state Corrections Department spokeswoman Robyn Zimmerman.

She said one of the three hostages, a woman, was released and that some 20 inmates were barricaded in a prison kitchen with the two remaining hostages, a man and a woman.

The disturbance at the medium-maximum Broad River Correctional Institution began about 8:30 a.m. local time with a fight in the cafeteria, then spread to sporadic fighting and small fires elsewhere in the prison, Zimmerman said. By 10 a.m., fires had been extinguished and fights stopped, she said.

Prison officials were investigating whether the disturbance was in reaction to an order by new state Corrections Director Michael Moore that all inmates must not wear their hair longer than collar length and must be clean-shaven, except for small mustaches.

Truck driver admits

killing prostitutes Winston-Salem, N.C. A truck driver suspected of killing prostitutes and dumping their bodies alongside interstate highways has confessed to killing two women and will be questioned about other murders, police said.

Sean Patrick Goble, 28, of Asheboro, N.C., was to be arraigned Monday on murder charges after police found his fingerprints on a plastic bag near a corpse found along I-81 in Virginia.

A search of his bloodstained tractor-trailer cab then turned up the pocketbook of an Ohio woman whose body was found along I-81 in Tennessee, police said Sunday.

Goble confessed to both slayings, and was being held in the Forsyth County, N.C., jail pending his extradition to Tennessee, said Forsyth County Sheriff Ron Barker.

Grenade in pocket

injures seven children Bartlett, Tenn. Seven children were hurt, two seriously, when a grenade fell out of a boy's pocket and exploded.

Police said one boy tried to detonate the grenade by throwing it on a blacktop area Sunday. When that failed, he tried to stuff it in his pocket. It fell out, hit the ground and exploded, tearing a 3-by-8 inch hole in the blacktop.

Zack Spohn, 11, was in critical condition and Joseph Hogan, 13, was in serious condition Sunday night. The other children, ages 6 to 15, were treated at area hospitals and released.

One of the children brought eight of the 40mm grenades, which are designed to be launched from a rifle, back from a trip to Fort Sill, Okla., said Bartlett Fire Department Chief Paul Smith.&lt;

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